Catherine O’Hara’s death hit differently. When news broke on January 30th that the comedic genius had passed away at 71, it felt like losing a family member we didn’t know we had until she was gone.
The Los Angeles County death certificate revealed what took her from us so suddenly. A pulmonary embolism, essentially a blood clot lodged in her lung, was the immediate cause. Rectal cancer lurked underneath as the underlying condition, but it was that clot that ultimately stopped everything.
TMZ reported she was rushed to the hospital after struggling to breathe. The whole thing happened so fast that even those close to her seemed blindsided by the speed of it all.
When Comedy Loses Its North Star
O’Hara wasn’t just funny. She was the kind of funny that made you believe comedy could be sophisticated and silly at the same time. From playing the frazzled mother in “Home Alone” to embodying the deliciously dramatic Moira Rose in “Schitt’s Creek,” she had range that most actors spend entire careers trying to find.
Her husband Bo Welch received her remains, and the family announced they’d hold a private celebration of life. That’s how these things go now in the entertainment world. Public mourning, private goodbyes.
The tributes flooded in immediately. Macaulay Culkin, who played her on-screen son decades ago in “Home Alone,” posted heartbreaking photos on Instagram. There’s something particularly gut-wrenching about watching the little kid from those Christmas movies all grown up and mourning his movie mom.
The Schitt’s Creek Family Speaks
Dan Levy’s tribute cut deep. He wrote about how O’Hara was “extended family” even before she played his mother on “Schitt’s Creek,” given her fifty-plus years working with his father Eugene Levy. That kind of collaborative history doesn’t come around often in Hollywood.
“It’s hard to imagine a world without her in it,” Levy wrote. And honestly, he’s right. O’Hara was one of those rare performers who seemed eternal, like she’d always be around to make us laugh at the absurdity of being human.
The cast of “The Studio,” her latest project where she played Patty opposite Seth Rogan, said they “pinched ourselves every day” getting to work with her. Even at 71, she was still the person everyone wanted in their news about new projects.
The Roles That Defined Generations
“Best in Show” showcased her improvisational brilliance. “Beetlejuice” proved she could hang with Tim Burton’s weirdness. But it was really “Schitt’s Creek” that introduced her to a whole new generation who had somehow missed her earlier work.
Moira Rose became iconic in ways that surprised everyone, including probably O’Hara herself. The wigs, the accent that came from nowhere and everywhere, the complete commitment to a character who could have been a cartoon but instead felt painfully real. That’s craft.
Pulmonary embolisms are silent killers. They don’t announce themselves until it’s often too late. One moment you’re breathing fine, the next you’re fighting for air as a clot blocks the oxygen your body desperately needs. For someone who made breathing life into characters look effortless, the irony feels cruel.
What stays with you about O’Hara isn’t just the laughs, though there were plenty. It’s how she made you feel like being weird was not just okay but something to celebrate, that finding humor in darkness wasn’t cynical but necessary, and that getting older didn’t mean getting boring or irrelevant or any less vital to the conversation.
